Easter Reflection

“We are an Easter people” seems to be a theme that I hear every Easter Sunday, as if it’s a seasonal way of living or feeling associated with spring time. How can I keep this zeal alive all year? I’m grateful to work in a community that fully celebrates the joy of Christ’s resurrection and there are resources surrounding me that help me focus on my interior life, so that I can minister to others. All of us in answering the call to work at a Marianist University have an opportunity to feel that blossoming and growth as we watch our students grow in service to others, academically, spiritually and in the many relationships they build on our campus’. If lent is a time of sacrifice and reflection, Easter represents a time for new growth which allows us to experience fully the pruning that occurred during those forty days.

Last summer, along with St. Mary’s University Media Specialist and MEA, Liza Sanchez, I had the chance to videotape an interview Brother John Totten. He was the oldest living Marianist at age 103 when he joined the Angels in heaven on Friday, April 28th. When asked what key insight or thoughts of Father Chaminade influenced him most, he responded, “He influenced my interior life. It’s possible that in anything or any occasion in life, the interior life is there and most important the presence of God.” It is important to develop our interior life, he suggests with a diligent focus on prayer and study. “Doing it in excess, in the presence of God, he welcomes us. He became man so that we can have that (interior life). God should be present in every creature and even more present with the presence of God’s intentions. He keeps us alive, if he didn’t have his preference we puff (and disappear). He stressed the heart of the Marianist message is, “That God loves us, and he is always present and it’s important to keep that in mind”. That profound visit with Brother John Totten taught me that through prayer and study, I can keep the Lord present in my interior life all the time. I can be an “Easter person” all year, all I have to do is take advantage of the resources for spiritual development that surrounds me on campus.